Title: “The Thirsty Cloud: An Ethnography of AI Data Centres and Water Scarcity in Brackenfell, Cape Town.”

Abstract:

This honours research project seeks to investigate the socio-environmental tensions surrounding data centre expansion and local water security. It explores the extent to which data centre sustainability practices are sufficient to mitigate local water scarcity. It also investigates how the presence of these facilities affects the water security of the surrounding community. The study explores the possibility that these data centres operate as infrastructural enclaves. These enclaves may prioritise global digital uptime over local resource survival. The research also investigates whether corporate sustainability narratives function as a form of hydrological greenwashing that obscures the reality of industrial water consumption. To investigate these dynamics, the project uses a qualitative methodology centred in Brackenfell. This design balances the internal operational frameworks of data centres with the external, lived experiences of the public.